This blog is a great opportunity to share ideas about ways to
transform schooling as we know it, to help all students realise their
talents, passions and dreams. Be great to hear from anyone out there! Feel free to add a comment to Bruce's Blog and enter e-mail to receive postings

Monday, August 05, 2013

Hekia may be right about students’ failing but her solutions are madness (and schools have a lot to learn as well)

﻿( Hekia Parata is New Zealand's Minister of Education)

﻿

Listens to the wrong people

For a number of years
the current National Government has been spreading the thought that one in five
students are failing. The Prime Minister, prior to the last election, even
went as far as to say that teachers are letting our children down.

Sends his kids to private schools

The answer to this
problem, the government believes, is sorting out teachers, by defining National
Standards, and holding schools accountable to achieving them – by grading
students into ‘above’, ‘at’ or ‘below’ the standards at the appropriate level.
Assessing students against these standards however is problematic. Schools
select a range of tests, including teacher objective judgements (OTJs), to
ascertain levels of achievement. This is difficult particularly if used to
compare schools from different socio-economic areas (called deciles) to
demonstrate which schools are failing Even the Prime Minister has said that the
standards are, to use his word, ‘shonky’.

Now the Minister is
trying to impose an even more ‘shonky’ sets of tests called a Progress and Consistency
Tool (PaCT). Intended to be made compulsory (enabling school comparison) it thankfully,
for the meantime, is to be optional.

Real educationalist

It all seems sensible
to a public who haven’t had the information to consider the implications of
such standards and testing. Recent statements by Nigel Lattaand Lester Flockton and would be worth sharing with parents.Also failing experiences of other countries
using similar approaches – England, Australia and the US would be worth
considering. In such countries schools have narrowed their curriculums to focus
on the tested subjects (literacy and numeracy), in the process side-lining other areas of
the curriculum that many so called ‘failing’ students find success in. Probably the worst thing is that schools all but ignore developing the attitudes and dispositions required to thrive in an
unpredictable and fast evolving future.

So Hekia is right to
worry about the one In five failing but her methods are madness. Instead New Zealand
needs to develop the gifts and talents of all students. As important as
literacy and numeracy are they need to be seen as ‘foundation skills’ to enable
students to develop their areas of personal interests. In this respect we need
a personalised education system customising learning the needs of each learner
not one that sorts, grades and standardises students. Hekia's answer faces the past; schools,
in contrast, need to face the demands of the future. Ironically the
standards agenda is having the effect of side-lining the enlightened future
oriented approach of the 2007 New
Zealand Curriculum.

The sad thing about
all this is that primary schools are being forced into defensive mode (
this is where Hekia’s standards approach digs deepest) when the real area of disengagement of students is to be found in the13
to 15 year olds.

Primary schools need
to see past the standards and believe that, if they were to present to their
students opportunities to be creative, to identify
and amplify the individual gifts students bring with them to their classes (or
in some cases to set about helping their students rediscover talents ignored by
previous teachers), their students would
do well on any standards.

‘Failing’
students suffer more from an ‘opportunity gap’ than an ‘achievement gap’.

Unfortunately most
schools are pressurized to implement practices that favour Hekia’s solution. Literacy and
numeracy take up a lions share of available time, all too often detached from class and
group inquiry topics. Pre-planned formulaic ‘best practices’ such as assessment
criteria develop student conformity. In contrast creative
classrooms integrate such areas in the service of achieving in depth inquiry
studies focusing on individual children’s skills and understandings.

This is not to
discount the idea that students come to any learning with a range of abilities
– but that differences are more about lack of opportunity rather than something innate. In any learning experience there
will always be students (even small groups) in need of special help to learn the 'hard
bits' but once this help is given then students should return to game of real
learning. This approach is well described by David Perkins in his book ‘Making Learning Whole’. Successful
countries like Japan, Korea and Finland also manage to succeed without recourse to ability
grouping.The key to success without crude ability grouping is to develop in all
students a ‘can do mind-set’; a belief that with effort and practice all
can achieve. 'Learning power', according toGuy Claxton in his book ‘What’s the Point of School’, is what is required. The
importance of perseverance (often called grit) is the key to any successful
creative individual. Such ideas are well described by Daniel Pink andCarol Dweck.

Business philosopher Peter Drucker has written
that the first country to develop a 21stC education system will win the future.
It won’t be with Hekia in charge and with schools too concerned with the
present to notice the damage they are doing implementing the wrong solutions.

Tomorrow is a moving
target we need new minds to ride the knowledge wave.

Thanks Anon.Now that I am only a spectator these days I am trying to see education as a total experience and am noticing how it is anything but a fair system for all students. And I can see how much it is influenced by market forces technocratic/audit political ideology and restricted by the unquestioning of the status quo ( the continuing use of ability grouping and a Victorian obsession with testing the three Rs).I wonder why all the great educational thinkers are ignored by those who control education including far too many principals. I have been told by principal friends I don't appreciate what it is like to manage( I hesitate to say lead) in schools these days. For me I see principals who are trapped in a present cage unwilling to try flying out - even if the cage door is open!

My feeling is that principals anywhere are always preoccupied ensuring their school is well regarded by their parent body making real changes difficult. Somehow there has to be national conversation to develop a new narrative for education to give the wider community and educators a new sense of direction to work towards. Critical 'spectators' , such as yourself, are a good beginning to start the ball rolling.